Publishing Business Group Telco — Minutes

Date: 2018-04-10

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Avneesh Singh, Ivan Herman, Wolfgang Schindler, Steve Breault, Tzviya Siegman, George Kerscher, Bill McCoy, Bill Kasdorf, Ric Wright, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Laurent Le Meurs, Rachel Comerford, Dave Cramer, Karen Myers, Paul Belfanti, Garth Conboy

Regrets: Brian O’Leary, Luc Audrain, Jens Klingelhöfer, Mateus Teixeira

Guests:

Chair: Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Scribe(s): Ric Wright

Content:

Ric Wright: I will volunteer to scribe

Introductions: Steve Breault, working on tokenizing ePubs with Blockchain

1. ISO version of EPUB 3.X

Avneesh Singh: https://github.com/w3c/publ-a11y/wiki/Five-options-for-creating-ISO-IEC-specifications

George Kerscher: 5 options available. Goal was to identify actions to evaluate the recommendations
… There are a number of viable options. There will be a meeting in May in which ISO wants to know what we want to put forth for certification
… Also looked at other options, such as completing EPUB 3.2 done as a CG report
… Then we could decide that if that should be chartered as a WG. If we did that, then we could use the PAS method to point the forward for ISO certification
… But it is very important to complete 3.2
… If we take that route than that is the simplest route.
… Another option would be that after some country endorsed EPUB as a national standard, then we could move forward, but that seems like a unlikely scenario

Ivan Herman: A couple of items to add to George’s list. Option 1 would require we would need to set up a new WG. But we do have an agreement with ISO so such fast-tracking can be done without changes to the proposed spec.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Does this mean we DON’T have to rewrite to submit to ISO?

Ivan Herman: Yes, that is correct, though there is no guarantee that the W3C members would approve so not a slam-dunk

George Kerscher: I would be concerned about submitting a spec to ISO that WASN’T a W3C Rec since we would risk changes after the fact.

Tzviya Siegman: Think we would have a hard time getting approval for a 3.2 spec since we have a EPUB 4 in process.

Ivan Herman: Share the concern, but am less pessimistic about the chances for success. But we need to be careful to make sure the specs are clear and negotiations go on before.

Ivan Herman: Which ever route we choose, it will not be easy. There are complications to doing some in W3C and some in ISO

Ric Wright: Agree that there may be some problems with 3.2 and 4 not that different. But isn’t that the point? If they are not, what are doing?

Laurent Le Meurs: Need too be careful that there are some that simply don’t like EPUB, whatever version.

Bill Kasdorf: Note that there is also a timing issue. ISO could be very slow. And potentially we could complete EPUB 4 BEFORE ISO completes its work, which would not be good.

Ivan Herman: Key question is “Do we want to do 3.2 as an ISO standard?”

Laurent Le Meurs: also, EPUB 3.2 cannot be defined as a “Web standard”.

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to focusing on EPUB 3.0.1 and not doing 3.2 as an ISO standard

Avneesh Singh: George’s first two options are quite complex. Do we want 3.2 to be an ISO standard? May be more important to focus on3.0.1. as an ISO standard.

Garth Conboy: Much truth here. Don’t think this group thinks EPUB 4 is that important. This group and industry think that 3.2 is is more important. Esp. resolving the 3.1 problems.

George Kerscher: Makoto’s immediate desire to work on 3.0.1 as an ISO standard, as does the EPUB a11y spec. Further, we continue to push 3.2 as the working spec and the target of EPUBCHeck, etc. will all work in our favor.

Tzviya Siegman: Need to be careful about what we “decide” in this group as this group is small, just a subset of a much larger group. Perhaps we might be better off to focus more on the a11y work. What are our goals? W3C specs? ISO specs? 3.2? 4?

Avneesh Singh: The A11y spec has a dependency on the EPUB spec, so the A11y spec cannot become an ISO standard without EPUB becoming an ISO standard

Garth Conboy: Sees EPUB 4 as aspirational not critical path to success like 3.2

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We still need to give feedback to George so he can go back to the ISO group in May

Ivan Herman: Bottom line is that in order to make something an ISO standard is a LOT of work. 3.0.1 as is could be submitted. But 3.2??

Bill Kasdorf: There would need to be some revisions to EPUB 3.0.1 language? But 3.0.1. is already a national standard in Korea, so that may smooth the path.

George Kerscher: This might be a good path, but we need to be careful that this work doesn’t negatively impact work on 3.2

Bill Kasdorf: For the record I recall Makoto saying that he thinks the prospects for Korea to submit 3.0.1 to ISO are slim

2. meeting schedule

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: PBG Meeting Cadence. Have decided to meet every other week, but to shift time from Asia and NA

3. RS update

George Kerscher: Attempting to crowdsource the testing process. More than 50 people have signed up. Next step is to get testing done, gather the results, etc.

4. EPUBCheck update

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11m1rsRIoRbX6DV530VeAS0Nx_vN5ugRsUDODDuW2T3E/edit#gid=0

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Trying to capture the list of top things to fix so we can prioritize the process. See link in minutes.

Tzviya Siegman: if you prefer github https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/issues

Laurent Le Meurs: This spreadsheet will migrate to github issues later? Yes.

5. Image resolution annotation

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: We have discussed ways of tagging images to indicate that low res images are intended to be low res (for whatever reason)
… Third parties are coming up with proprietary solutions. Is this a problem?

Tzviya Siegman: Yes. Proprietary solutions are an anathema… Further, there already is a image-details attribute in HTML.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: So what we need to push a “best practices” to use this “details” attribute.

Ivan Herman: I think that in CSS there is a way to specify the resolution (relative?) of images?

Tzviya Siegman: details https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/interactive-elements.html#the-details-element

Dave Cramer: Not exactly. Intended for indicating multiple images of different resolutions (see link)

6. good short list of best practices

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: How are we going to put together a best practices since there are so many?

Tzviya Siegman: Might be best to put together a mini-TF for this.

Rachel Comerford: Happy to participate.

Ric Wright: Ditto

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: Hard part of this is most people do not have the breadth and depth to know all the pitfalls and ways around them